152 A MONTH IN THE FORESTS OF FRANCE. 



he possible for them to define in what that vitality 

 existed. As I went out of the highway, to see the 

 hounds draw, I said to myself, " If we find, and I 

 have to come back in a hurry. Coco shall jump that 

 high road with a run, by way of safety." Well, we 

 went some way into the magnificent wood, when, on 

 reaching a given spot, M. Rambour dismounted and, 

 I suppose, inspected the usings, the larder, or the 

 lairs of wolves, for he gave the words for the three 

 hounds to be slipped on the expected drag. On 

 getting the word, my English brethren will guess my 

 astonishment when I beheld the piqueur snatch at the 

 couples, dragging the sleepy old hounds up and down 

 as if he was mad and they deserved punishment by 

 garotting, uttering to them all the time wild shouts 

 of excitement, volumes of rattled r-r-r's, and little 

 short French exclamations, which, I take it, if trans- 

 lated into dogpit and badger-baiting English, would 

 mean, " high, hoo, poop, hallow, seize him, shake 

 him, worry." 



When he had thus shaken them up. Into efferves- 

 cence like ginger-beer or physic to be taken, and 

 from pain and delirium the hounds had commenced 

 fighting each other, he let them slip, and away they 

 all went, blind from partial strangulation, tumbling 

 against the bushes, and, of course, in the fullest 



